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Not everyone should meditate

joshcsimmons.com

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Re: Not everyone should meditate

#51

Post by TapWaterBandit »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #10
omnicognate wrote: post #3

There are different ways of meditating. If you're hallucinating blue, humming God balls you're certainly not doing what I do. I think what I do would probably be beneficial for most people. I'd hesitate to say all.

Yeah, I don't think too many people are accidentally going to stumble upon the sort of meditation-induced psychosis talked about in the post using Headspace or Waking Up to try and reclaim some presence in their thoughts. They just get you to sit there, consciously realize that thoughts come from nowhere, and notice that you can merely discard them. After a year of the Waking Up app, it's just a practical way to regr…

I have been doing Waking up and meditating 10 minutes a day and really liking it for exactly this reason. It almost feels like I am "training" my mind like I train my body with exercise whereas previously my thoughts and feelings would just run away on me and I would be along for the ride. Whereas now I am getting a bit better at realising I don't just need to be dragged along by whatever pops into my head moment to moment.

Re: Not everyone should meditate

#52

Post by KerrAvon »

reddit_clone wrote: post #12

People who suffer from severe ADHD, meditation is nearly impossible.

This is definitely not the case for everyone with severe ADHD. I think you have to define "severe" and you have to define "meditation." If your ADHD allows you to hold a steady professional-level job, I suspect you can do TM, for example.

Re: Not everyone should meditate

#54

Post by JacobThreeThree »

iLoveOncall wrote: post #24
skilled wrote: post #20

This is a great perspective. I know what the author means with it, too. I spent 5 years in daily meditation practice (twice a day for 20 minutes) and it completely altered my state of mind. I was a naturally introverted person when I started, though I believe that meditation really stepped it up a notch for me. The strange thing about meditation and the idea of living in the present is that it completely transcends y…

> The strange thing about meditation and the idea of living in the present is that it completely transcends your life experience. It is not in human nature to fight with the inner workings of your own psychology, and for me - meditation really amplified all that I had been trough or was going through at the time. I really don't understand why the world just accepts that meditation as a whole is not just another versi…

I'm in the same boat as you.

I think there's a lot we don't know about human psychology, the brain and self-help practices, but I haven't seen convincing evidence that meditation works.

This 2017 publication sums it up nicely: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1745691617709589

Re: Not everyone should meditate

#55

Post by ssijak »

skilled wrote: post #29
mahathu wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What sort of meditation practice did you do?

I was never initiated or dedicated myself to a specific practice. I can say today it was a mix of mindfulness and practical Vipassana. I think one of the things people complain about when it comes to meditation is concentration. I was not one of those people. It came extremely natural to me.

Complaining about concentration is like starting to train soccer and complaining that you are not on a Messi level and dropping it.

Re: Not everyone should meditate

#57

Post by ggpsv »

skilled wrote: post #20

This is a great perspective. I know what the author means with it, too. I spent 5 years in daily meditation practice (twice a day for 20 minutes) and it completely altered my state of mind. I was a naturally introverted person when I started, though I believe that meditation really stepped it up a notch for me. The strange thing about meditation and the idea of living in the present is that it completely transcends y…

Thanks for sharing. I'm curious, did you consider at any point untangling those feelings with a psychotherapist?

Your experience resonates with me, but I came to a different conclusion. Meditation did open the doors to a more conscious awareness. That sounds grandiose but it isn't. It means having a practice of observing thoughts and emotions as they arise. As you describe, this can lead to more clarity into the order or nature of things. But meditation ends there, it is a tool to bring about conscious awareness. It does not "create" those thoughts or emotions.

I ask whether you've worked with a psychotherapist because I found myself in a similar predicament. I realized that my discontent had little or nothing to do with my "spiritual" practice. Simply put, the hustle and bustle of daily life is a sure way to keep many thoughts and emotions at bay. A meditative practice lets the stream pour through. For me meditation became a tool to bring those thoughts to the foreground and getting to know them. Through that process I get to know myself better. If necessary, I'll work with a psychotherapist to go through it.

Re: Not everyone should meditate

#58

Post by zozbot234 »

cbfrench wrote: post #39
kragen wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the author of the article has yet reached the Dark Night of the Soul.

Or at the very least doesn’t mean what St. John of the Cross means by it. When I took ascetical theology in seminary, my professor told us that if someone comes to you and says they’re undergoing the Dark Night, they probably aren’t. (Unless you for some reason happen to be the spiritual director of a contemplative order, but even then.) He wasn’t being flippant; it was just a recognition of the degree of spiritual p…

Well, vipassana meditation is just as intense as any other tradition of contemplative prayer.[0] Canonically the Dark Night happens soon after the first loose "hint" of stream entry or actual awakening/enlightenment, namely the second vipassana jhana, characterized by seeming effortlessness of insight (Daniel Ingram calls this the "Arising and passing away") and this should be enough to tell whether you're facing it.

[0] And yes, in case you didn't know, prayer is definitely a legitimate part of meditation, even going by Buddhist teachings - the typical metta/loving-kindness meditation is indistinguishable from a kind of prayer.

Arguably, a very legitimate role can even be recovered/reconstructed for outright theistic contemplative worship directed at the "Ultimate Self", essentially the Brahman of Hinduism - although this would of course reflect a very imperfect understanding of the Brahman, one way too error-prone for those who would seriously aim at enlightenment and unity with the Ultimate Self in this very lifetime. But nonetheless plenty enough to look forward to what's effectively an afterlife in the Pure Abodes realm as an anagami or "non-returner"! Hinduists in the "dualist" tradition, for all its imperfection, have of course always been aware of this as a possible path.

Re: Not everyone should meditate

#59

Post by james-redwood »

oh_sigh wrote: post #28
carterschonwald wrote: post #4

Theres actually some evidence (or a least a lot of pubmed papers) that touch on how for certain at risk populations, meditation can increase the probability of an episode of psychosis! (so anyone who has any family history of schizophrenia or other things in the same space, really need to be careful of meditation and friends) see these google scholar results for more info: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=meditat…

The first link is a single male patient who claims meditation provoked his psychosis. Other people suffering from psychosis have blamed, lets see, off the top of my head - wifi signals, chemtrails, their gang stalkers, fluoride, the CIA, aliens, lizard-men, etc. Is there any reason to believe a random psychotic person when they make a claim about meditation, versus when they make the claim about wifi signals? The cas…

Agreed. It’s a weak result.

Re: Not everyone should meditate

#60

Post by ssijak »

kragen wrote: post #22
hombre_fatal wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I don't think too many people are accidentally going to stumble upon the sort of meditation-induced psychosis talked about in the post using Headspace or Waking Up to try and reclaim some presence in their thoughts. They just get you to sit there, consciously realize that thoughts come from nowhere, and notice that you can merely discard them. After a year of the Waking Up app, it's just a practical way to regr…

I think it's more a question of dose. If you're meditating 20 minutes a day for three years you probably won't see a big effect. If you're meditating 12 hours for a day for 10 years, you're going to encounter a lot of stuff that could get labeled "psychosis" by people who don't know about it. And, it may be permanent. What kind of meditation you're doing will affect what you encounter and how you deal with it, but no…

If you eat one cube of sugar in a coffee per day and no sweets you are good. If you eat one kilo of sugar each day you'll probably get diabetes in a few months.
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